United We Fall

Paul Burka, the senior executive editor of Texas Monthly, has an incredible column with that title in today's New York Times. The whole thing has to be seen to be believed. Here is a letter I sent to the Times.

Paul Burka's column is disingenuous, to say the least. To compare George W. Bush with Barack Obama is like comparing oranges with apples, or rather lemons with apples. Bush made a conscious decision after 9/11 to "go it alone". Karl Rove & Co. were striving for a permanent Republican majority. Bush could have had more bipartisanship after 9/11, which is usually a President's goal in times of war. (Remember the saying "Partisanship ends at the water's edge"?) Instead he, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. decided they could have things their way, that they could enforce their own view of reality on the country and even on the rest of the world. We now have to deal with the results of their arrogance.

Obama may be naive, but he is sincere, and he is anything but arrogant (except about hope). Even granting his naiveté, he doesn't need to be lectured to like a little schoolboy about the rough and tumble political world.. Remember, he comes from the "Chicago School" of politics. He is entitled to spread his message of hope, and it is amazing to me the way the political establishment, from left to right, is -almost frantically and hysterically- trying to marginalize him.